


Wake Up Call

by MiniMax



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), war related violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-09-26 11:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9894161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniMax/pseuds/MiniMax
Summary: War means different things to different people; for those from Chorus, this is especially true. This is a collection of moments from when its people not only realized themeaningof war, but also when it began for each of them.Please note that this story takes place in ever growing world built by Salt Sanford inMiles To GoandPut My Guns In The Ground. I have her express permission to use this world and the lovely OC's she has built into it.





	1. Grey

Emily knows _many_ things. Sometimes, she thinks she knows _too_ many things, but it’s not as if she can argue with the innumerable ways her eidetic memory has saved her life and the lives of those on her operating table. 

It’s why, as she wrenches into a gasping sweaty sit, covers tossed back and chest heaving, that she knows this is precisely the third time in her life that she has awoken in such a manner.

“S’matter?”

Oliver’s arm stretches taut across the length of her collarbone. His voice is thick and eyes bleary as he squints slowly around the room, but his grip on the gun is steady as she slowly guides his arm back down.

“Shh,” she soothes. “I’m sorry, darling. I just need to step out for a moment.”

He blinks his other eye open and scowls. “Ya, sure lil' lady?” He lets her place the gun on her night table.

“Very. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Oliver lets her go after a moment of consideration, and she drops a kiss to his scruffy cheek. Stepping out of their bedroom, she wonders how many of the remaining simulation troopers and soldiers of Chorus are waking up tonight in the same manner as her darling Ollie, alert and with weapons drawn. While most of the planet gets lost in the celebration of the end of the war, those who fought, a decade later, still find the anniversary to be the most triggering days of the year.

Since the war, she has split her working time between the operating room at the _finally_ finished Armonia Hospital and a psychiatric office where she is therapist to many patients she counts as friend outside the walls of her office. It’s unorthodox and crosses more than a few patient doctor lines, but there were too many soldiers who refused to speak to anyone else. On the list of lines crossed, it is a small one; the use of her skills to help these soldiers is the very smallest thing she can do in return for their service.

 _Enough_ , she chastises herself. Her mind has pushed her awake for a reason and her mind has never done things idly. 

The first time she awoke from a dead sleep, she was eight and it was mid-summer. They had moved from the house with the sun crows to the city of Imphonia where she had been enrolled in a school which promised to keep up with her intellect — they had _tried_ , the _dears_. She had snapped awake to a pressing silence from the apartment above her family’s, and she felt in her chest more than heard with her ears, a hollow clicking noise. She had roused her parents and shoved them from the apartment building with nothing more than her insistence and her hands pressed to their backs. They had barely cleared the building when the apartment above exploded outwards in with a heat she has never forgotten. A recovered a data thumb revealed a suicide note; the tenant had wired the entire building to go with them, but the charges failed, taking out only their apartment and her family’s below.

The second time she awoke gasping and struggling for breath, she was twenty-five, and in a supply room at the Imphonia Central Hospital, during her second residency. Coming off a twenty-three hour shift and unable to find the energy to make her way home, she had bunked down in an out of the way closet which she and a few of the other residents had laid claim to.

 _“S’wrong?”_ her co-resident had asked from his huddle of blankets.

 _“Nothing,”_ she had answered.

A lie, but there hadn’t been time to clarify. She had bolted from the closet towards the main building, crashing up the stairs to the fifth floor operations wing, knocking right into the very doctor she had been hunting for, exiting a post op room, the tech surgeon at their side.

_“Doctor, you made a mistake!”_

No one likes to be told they are wrong, least of all the head of surgery by an upstart resident with an annoying habit of making them look like a fool. The ensuing argument was loud and crowd drawing, but in the end she had convinced the doctor and tech surgeon to review the operation files of the patient they had just closed up. Pushing them to data skim the file she has them stop ten hours into the spinal replacement where, collectively, they see it. There was tiny rupture in the nano tap, leaking the bitty bots into the patient’s blood stream. The rupture had clearly been mistaken for a fluid spill. Left unchecked, the nano bots would do what they had been programed to do, bore through bone matter. Which was well and good when there was _prosthetic_ on hand to replace said bones, but less so when the patient was stitched back together and lying in recovery.

So twice. Twice her mind pulled her from a dead sleep, frantically reviewing a memory because there was _something_ her waking mind had over looked.

She steps through the kitchen into her office where her prized sun crow painting hangs behind her desk. Below the canvas, is her scan locked case of research and medical files. It had taken close to a year after the war to track down all her medical files from the various places she had worked, both as a student and professionally, and even longer to gather the files she had accumulated during the war. She was still missing several of the later, given the proclivity for losing her base of operations to inconvenient bombings.

“Where is it?” she murmurs, getting to her knees to view the earliest dated entries of the data thumbs. ‘No, no, no- _ah!_ Yes, there you are you silly thing.”

She plucks a file from the second row from the bottom, the embossed ARCH632 tag on the side, worn from her lifelong habit of fiddling. “Now _why_ did a silly little thing like you wake me up?” 

She grabs her datapad on her way back to the living room and plugs the data thumb into its port, switching the visual to the tv, and starts to sift through the files.

The work was from her brief foray into archeology in her early twenties, when she entertained the notion of dropping medicine all together. The impulse had lasted long enough for her to attain a second degree and become a foremost expert on the remnants of the ruined cities. She had helped develop a rosetta stone based on the known translations of their symbology, and implemented an interface which tapped into the trace amounts of electrical data which was regularly recorded. At the time, there had been no discernible pattern to the recordings or their meanings. The program developed based on her interpretations had begun to yield promising translations and it seemed that a breakthrough in the alien technology had been nigh when the program had lost funding. 

“What ya got there, Emily?”

She jumps as Oliver comes around the couch and settles in next to her, pressing a glass of water into her hands. She frowns. “I told you I would be back in a jiff.”

He shrugs. “You so rarely wake up all a jitter so I figured it was my husbandly duty to see what might be troubling you. All the anniversary revelry is enough to wake the gorram dead. ”

“I can assure you that the anniversary is not keeping me awake, nor did it force me awake.” She pulls her legs up and tucks into his side. “Though I promise I won’t stay up much longer, because as you so _astutely_ pointed out yesterday _was_ the anniversary. With all the hulabaloo and and ceremonies and speeches and remembering, I’m bound to have some emergency appointments tomorrow. I’ll need to be bright eyed for that.”

“Em.”

She places a hand along his thigh in reassurance. “There’s no need for that tone love.”

“We have an agreement, Emily.” He threads his fingers through hers. “You put together the world with these miracle hands but when you find yourself in pieces, you come to me for any help puttin’ ‘em back.”

She smiles at him, tension she hadn’t realized she was holding loosening in her shoulders. “I know darling. I have always kept that promise and I have every intention to continue keeping it.”

“Hmm.” He leans in close and squints into her eyes. She allows him his amusements. “Alright. All the same, I ain't seen a person wake up like that since Washington. Are impersonations of Agent Frecklelancer going to be a new thing for us know? I've got quite a few in my arsenal.”

She smacks his chest and leans back against the couch. “I would never I can assure you, that was only the third time I’ve ever woken up like that. I can _also_ assure you it’s never because of nightmares. It’s always little things that have slipped my mind. Things that I don’t realize are important until after the fact.”

“What’s this then?”

“Well...” she fiddles with the datapad on her lap back tracking to her initial publication of the Chorus rosetta stone. “When I was getting my masters in archeology-”

“Your brilliance never _ceases_ to-”

“Yes, dear.” She places a hand across his scruffy mouth. “None of that now or I most _definitely_ won’t get the shut eye I need.”

“I’ll try,” he grumbles from behind her hand. “I just can’t help myself when that mind of yours is shinin’ bright.”

“I know you struggle love. I promise that your suffering will _not_ be in vain. Now,” she pulls another article, “as you can see, I made some great strides in translating the runes that are all over this planet; did you know this planet was first colonized _because_ of the ruins? The original colonizers were supposed to unlock the technologies on this planet. _Imagine_ the knowledge Ollie, just _imagine_ it!”

“I’ve never been one for imagining things I can’t already make for myself.” He shrugs. “I can see how the idea would draw you in though. Your pretty mind must have been alight with all the fancy ways there might be to save the whole wide world with alien medicine.”

“You _do ___know me so very well,” she laughs, flipping through more of her notes. “That’s _exactly_ why I was drawn into the project. About two generations into the post-colonial world, the projects were largely abandoned because the results yielded made little sense and Chorus had _plenty_ of other riches to harvest. It’s actually why Chorus has been so autonomous— because the UN had been interested in the wealth of alien knowledge specifically.”

“Mmm, so the planet was abandoned by the government and UNSC after you were deemed useless.” 

“Precisely.” 

“Government for you there.” 

She pats his hand. “ _Quite._ We as a planet didn’t suffer for it the way many planets might have. The gene pool of those who first settled here was more than a trifle intelligent; and the people who followed were of a similar mind set. It’s actually why there is such a high instance of genius here. Great intellectual stock. Part of the history we were taught though, in every school, is how this settlement came to be. _Why_ we came to be here. Just like a fairytale, except we visited them on school trips and the like. And, well...” 

“You had to try and solve it.” 

“It _could_ be said,” she turns her head to bite at his shoulder playfully, “that I have a certain _kind_ of arrogance.” 

“Need I remind _you_ , that _you_ keep remindin’ _me_ , that you’re lookin for some shut eye tonight?” 

“Yes, yes.” Emily pulls away and focuses on the screen, thumbing through more articles. She pulls up the one about the funding cut. “So, by the time my translations were published, they had contracted a software engineer to try to make a program which could feasibly lock in on all the random energy readings we get from the ruins. I was on my way out the door as it were. We were having funding problems and we reached out to off world resources to further the program. I was interviewed by a representative of Nix Industries, the R&D department of the Kerberos Corp.” 

“I know that name.” Oliver frowns at her. “Didn’t some joker from that company speak at the ceremonies today?” 

“Yes.” She nods. “I think that’s what brought this to the front of my memory. The guy who spoke on their behalf, _his_ company bought out Charon Industries after the war. It’s the same guy who interviewed me all those years ago to look over funding for the project. <

He scratches his chin and squints at the scan of her notes from the interview. “The same mousy old man from today?" 

“Yes. Obviously he’s showing the twenty years since I last saw him but I’m certain.” 

“Hmm,” he rumbles. He gets to his feet and grabs her now empty glass, moving to the kitchen. She’s thumbing through the rest of the research she’d pulled up on the one Mr. Clause Renaudin, representative of Nix Industries and pauses on his then resume and pulls up his current one. Oliver steps back into the room, and runs his eyes over the two files scrolling over the TV. She sees the moment that he sees what she does. She sees it in the way he starts to remember things from his own life, from a life so gone from now, she’s not sure he even knows the true parts of it anymore. 

When he looks back at her however, it’s with his usual smirk, and it’s clear he’s not going to point it out. “Maybe you just remembered Mr. Mousy wrong.” 

They both know that’s a lie. 

“Back to bed with you, Ollie love. I’ll be along shortly.” 

“I’ll be hunting sheep till you join me.” He bends to press a kiss to her forehead and disappears into their bedroom. 

Emily looks back at the resumes with a sigh. The older credentials came with a glowing character reference by one Malcolm Hargrove citing work he’d done as a liaison lawyer. The current one, readily available with all the press coverage the end of war ceremonies and events currently happening, had no such references. 

The blue light from the data TV starts to hurt her eyes, so she disconnects the whole thing and sits in the dark. 

This is not her usual scene. Brooding in the dark on the cusp of dawn, but the turn her thoughts have taken deserve the dark because she’s not sure what she would do with them during the day because it seems... it _seems—_. 

It _seems_ like her research is what brought Hargrove to Chorus in the first place. 

It _seems_ like the start of their orchestrated civil war was the _fault_ of her arrogance. 

Which is, of course a _wildly_ arrogant thought in and of itself. 

She tips her head back against the sofa and stares at nothing. _Arrogant_ maybe, but the thought tracks. It makes sense. An _awful_ sense but... 

She hadn’t followed the program very closely after she left to pursue her medical residency. _Arrogant_ to ignore the veritable lifetime achievement and historic immortality that would surely follow if her rosetta stone _had_ in fact unlocked eons of lost knowledge because she was bored by the study and the waiting. 

She did remember hearing the project never secured more funding and that the software engineer had vanished, presumably back to his old employment— _curious_ — and that was that. 

Tomorrow, she is going to look in the eyes of the women and men, who, pushing a decade after the fact, are still struggling with the repercussions of an orchestrated war. Beyond all the words ever spoken to her in sessions, the most common thing expressed was the feeling of guilt. 

_I should have known._

_It was my fault._

_If only I had realized sooner._

_Can’t believe I was so stupid._

Leaving the darkened living behind, Emily crawls into bed and curls an arm around Oliver, snuggling up to his back. She’s spent enough of her life trying to talk people out of their irrational guilt, trying to get them to see it for what it _is_ , to not be able recognize the impulse. 

She prides herself in avoiding hypocrisy because if she can’t be honest with herself she can’t very well expect her friends to do the same. 

So. 

Acknowledge what you did. 

_In the wilder arrogance of my youth, I helped develop a technology which had the potential to unlock the knowledge of an ancient race. I abandoned the project when I grew bored and failed to realize the full potential of the project._

Acknowledge the consequences. 

_My research captured the attention of Malcolm Hargrove, subcommittee CEO of Charon Industries, who then came to the conclusion that staging a war to steal said technology was more cost effective than working with the planet’s inhabitants._

Acknowledge what you _didn’t_ know. 

_That my research was stolen and used to start a war. That Locus was manipulating the entire Federal Army. That I did not know. I_ couldn’t _have known._

She exhales heavily and presses her lips to Oliver’s back. He squeezed her hand. 

“Alright there, love?” 

“I am.” 

She is. 

She has found pieces to a puzzle bigger than she expected. Tomorrow night, at Donut and Doc’s annual post memorial event, hosted specifically for those who fought and still lived, she would pry Vanessa away from Carolina long enough to see if they could launch a quiet investigation into Renaudin, to see if he was a puppet or a puppeteer. 

The only thing that really changed was her perception of when it all began. She used to pin it on the first shrapnel surgery she performed, after the very first bombing. _Now_ , she marked the true start of the war to twenty years ago when she sat down, fresh faced and naive, to speak with a representative of a man who would try and _fail_ to destroy her home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of things to touch on! 
> 
> First of all, the lovely [Cliffe](http://cliffearts.tumblr.com) has made this gorgeous accompanying piece of art for Emily's chapter, which can be seen [here](http://cliffearts.tumblr.com/post/157607057796/now-why-did-a-silly-little-thing-like-you-wake-me)!! Please take the time to check it out, and also take a peek at [Katie Jensen](http://cliffearts.tumblr.com/post/158244768649/second-image-i-created-for-the-rvbficwars-big). There will be more gorgeous work later!
> 
> Participating in the Big Bang has been a lot of fun, and was a real learning experience for me. So much thanks to the mods who have done a fantastic job running this event!
> 
> Big thanks again to [Salt Sanford](http://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsanford/pseuds/saltsanford), for allowing me to build this story in the world she created in, _Put My Guns In The Ground_ , and _Miles To Go_. For letting me borrow her OC's and also for being my beta.
> 
> As a heads up, each chapter of this story will be told from the perspective of a different character. Many of them you will find familiar, though there are a few OC's sprinkled throughout. Each little story, brings us closer to the moment when our beloved BGC crash lands into this world.


	2. Mason Wu

It is taking entirely too long to get off this God forsaken planet, and it’s making his nerves jangle. He’s been pacing for hours, but with every inquiry at the boarding ports, he has been sent back waiting. The latest delay, he has been told, is in regards to electromagnetic spikes in the atmosphere known for causing disruptions the engine systems of any and all aircraft. 

Apparently, Chorus is _known_ for it.

Apparently, it’s caused by the countless alien ruins that cover the planet.

 _Apparently,_ they emit bursts of energy that fuck with the ions in the atmosphere and no one really knows why.

“Can you explain this to me, _one_ more time. _”_

The woman he’s speaking to heaves a dramatic sigh. 

_Again._

“I really don’t know how much clearer I can be, sir,” she answers, clearly striving for a patient tone. “Due to the resonant interference of the planet’s ruins, it is unsafe to leave atmo, because there is a seventy-two percent chance of an all systems failure on any and all aircraft.”

“Because of ruins.”

“Yes.”

“Because of ancient _alien_ ruins.”

“Yes! Exactly.”

“You know that sounds ridiculous, right?”

“Really now,” she shakes his passport open with excessive force, “Mr. _Wu_. Do you mean to tell me, that you didn’t bother to like, _learn_ anything about Chorus before coming here?”

He glares at the girl who barely looks older than his daughter. “Of _course_ I know about the planet. Self governed. Alien ruins. Shitty cable. Rude people. Did I miss anything?”

She actually rolls her eyes at him. “Look Mr. Wu. Please make your way back to the boarding terminal and wait. You’ll notice there are a _lot_ of people in the same position as you, all of whom don’t seem to have a problem waiting for the atmo to clear. Cause like, they value their lives.”

He knows he’s being unreasonable, that he’s channeling his inner Isaac, but he can’t quite help himself. There’s something about this planet that’s got his back up. He’s been itching to get off world and home bound almost from the moment he landed here.

“Okay. Look. I’m sorry? It’s just, I’ve been hanging out around here for five hours already, and you haven’t given me any idea about when I’ll be able to get off world.”

She sighs, as if he is the most unreasonable person in the world, but seems to rally her customer service skills. “I haven’t been able to _give_ you a definite time, because it’s not a measurable phenomenon.” She takes a deep breath. “ _However,_ I can say, that it’s extremely unlikely to be much more than another two hours. The interference rarely lasts more than six.”

He sighs, thinking that it would be useless at this point to leave the port to find a drink or three. 

“ _Although!_ The longest recorded interference storm was nearly seventy six hours long.”

He snatches his passport from her hand, slinging his bag up over his shoulder and turns away in a huff.

“I’ll be sure to let you know right away when the port is clear for departure,” she calls after him cheerily.

He drops down into one of the few empty rows of seats and tosses his bag down on the floor. The terminal is more than half full, and no one seems to be particularly fussed about the wait. In fact, given the preponderance of people clustered around tablets and card games and an entire family tucked away in sleeping bags, it seems that the terminal attendant had been right after all. Waiting, seems to just be a thing that the people of Chorus are _fine_ with. He watches as a red haired family enters the boarding terminal, scans the area, and heads in his direction. He slouches down farther, kicking out his legs and summons his best, Sam _Don’t-Come-Any-Closer_ Ortez, scowl.

“Do you mind if we sit here?”

Which, as his wife so often reminded him, was only effective when Sam _himself_ was the one handing out the look. He lets the glare sit for a few more moments, before sighing and pushes his bag under his seat with his feet.

The family settles down immediately, either unaware of his reluctance, or willing to overlook it. They, too, seem to be prepared for a long wait, and he feels his irritation spike again at the inconvenience of no one having pointed out to him these ridiculous planetary issues.

“You have all the markings of a off worlder,” says the woman settling in a seat down from him. 

He pointedly pulls his datapad from his bag. “What gave it away?”

She laughs at him. “The gallows look of boredom on your face. I’ve often thought, that we as a people, do a disservice to folks visiting our humble little planet. There ought to be big blazing signs stating ‘Beware of alien things, fucking up your flight plans and dropping your data calls!’”

“Honey-” the man interrupts at the same time as the girl between them holds up her palm, saying “Swear jar!”

“Oh, goodness,” she mutters, reaching into her pocket and fishing out a bill. “As I’ve tried to explain to my husband, on _numerous_ occasions, you can take the mechanic out the shop but you can’t take the shop out the mechanic.” She slaps the bill into the girl’s hand. “Make sure that goes straight into your university fund.”

“Of course,” she answers with a cheeky, brace filled grin. “That’s _exactly_ what I’m going to do with it.”

“Hmm,” she squints suspiciously before rolling her eyes and turning back to him. “I”m Callie Jensen. This is my daughter, Katie. That’s the husband, Charles.”

“Wu,” he offers after a pointed silence. “Mason Wu. Soon to be off planet and hopefully never back.”

She laughs. “You are not the first to walk away with that impression, not by a long shot.”

“What brought you to Chorus?” Charles asks. He’s helping Katie unload a small bag filled with what appears to be radio equipment, spreading in out on the table between the seats. “It’s not the sort of place people just happen to visit on a whim.”

“Job offer.”

The couple exchanges a look. “Really?” Callie leans forward. “What kind of job is good enough to bring you to a planet in the outer reaches? Was it a government thing?”

“Oh my goodness, _Callie._ ”

She waves a hand at her spluttering husband. “It’s okay. I’m nosey _and_ charming. You are, of course, under no obligation to humor me, Mr. Wu.”

“It’s fine.” Wu tosses his datapad on top of his bag, recognizing the futility of continued quiet. “Better way to pass the time, I suppose. Some old friends reached out to me with a job offer, and it was tempting enough to check out in person.”

“Friends local to Chorus?” Callie asks. She’s frowning at something Katie is doing with a bundle of wires. “No, no dear, splice the red and _then_ the green—”

“No, off worlders. They've been working the job themselves for a while, and convinced their boss to reach out to me.”

“Didn’t measure up, I take it?” Charles frowns thoughtfully. “Strange to hear that there are jobs reaching off world for employees.”

“Is that really so strange?” Wu asks absently. He’s watching the project unfolding on the table. “What exactly are you trying to make there, Katie?”

“Comms,” mother and daughter answer simultaneously. 

Katie sticks her tongue out at Callie and holds up the open casing to an old model UNSC land radio. An intricate circuit board blinks up at him, flashing blue and red, with finely soldered silver half bails along the edges, keeping bundles of tiny wires out of reach of the circuitry 

Wu takes it from her, bringing the device in close to inspect. “Did you make this?”

“Yeah!”

“What’s the design based on?”

She sneaks a glance at her parents and pushes her glasses up her nose. “It’s my design actually! Mom had these dated UNSC radios, and I’m trying to incorporate them into a wireless network that works on a frequency outside the range of the ruins. We’re gonna test drive it today!”

He hands the device back and scoffs. “These ruins interfere with communications too?”

“Oh yeah,” Callie says. “They can be a _real_ nightmare. The interference isn’t really an issue within, say, the range of a city, but it becomes difficult to run communications from the ground to the air. One of two things happens; the entire communications system crashes, or the signal is inverted and broadcasted for anyone to pick up. We’re trying to create a new, secure, and private channel to be able to speak on.”

“It’s embarrassing when my whole class get’s an, _‘I love you Katie bear!’_ , text from my mom, just because they’re off playing war in Imphonia.”

“Katie!”

“Sorry, dad.” She hunches over the comm unit, an unhappy frown on her face. Wu raises an eyebrow at Charles, who shrugs.

“We’re not playing _war_ ,” he offers. “There’s been a lot of political debate about reaching into off world resources to help with situations like this.” He gestures to the comms. “The government is pretty firm about wanting to maintain our independence, whereas folks like _us_ , are more inclined to seek out the help and knowledge we don’t currently have access to.”

“It’s not like we’re bad off, as a _planet_ ,” Callie picks up; they’ve clearly shared this speech many times. “It’s just sort of baffling that no one knows about us. I mean, we have ancient, _active_ , alien technology on our planet that muddles our daily lives, and no one seems to know about it! Just a few years ago, there was a big buzz about these grad students at Imphonia Main, on the verge of a linguistic breakthrough and then bam, they lost funding. How crazy is that? You’d think someone out there would have a passing interest in what that kind of technology could _mean._ ”

“You’d _think,_ ” Wu mutters, mind spinning. He’s beginning to fill in all the holes from Issac’s job pitch. 

“We’re just doing our civic duty,” Charles finishes. “Most of the debate is happening in Imphonia, so when we can go and join the rallies we do.”

“It would be _nice_ if I could come too,” Katie interrupts loudly.

“I know darling,” Callie says, patting Katie’s hand. “We’ll figure out a way to get you involved, but I’m just not comfortable with you there right now.”

“Violent protests?”

“Not so much,” Callie says, “but the tension feels like it's reaching a breaking point.”

“My sister’s coming to pick her up in a little bit,” Charles confides. “It’ll give us the perfect chance to test these comms out, both while we’re in the air and when we land in Imphonia.”

“Hmm.” Wu extends his hand back out for the device. “I have some ideas that might just work.”

“Really?” Katie exclaims.

“Sure do.” He slides onto the floor to sit besides her at the little table. “I was enlisted in the UNSC, longer ago than I care to remember, and I worked in communications. Now, I don’t know anything about the alien technology _here,_ but the Covenant, well, they had this way of burying their chatter with loop technology. If there’s any correlation, we could probably—”

Time slips away, as he and Katie work over the device. She’s a clever girl, and reminds him a bit of his daughter, all eager and quick thinking. Her parents chatter quietly above them, about the particulars of the rally their going to and the unease he’s been feeling since landing planet side is as high as it’s ever been. Katie is just putting the finishing touches on the comm when the girl for the boarding station comes over to him.

“Mr. Wu. I just wanted to be the _first_ to tell you,” she says with an excess of drama, “that you are now able to board your flight. The storm has passed.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, pushing to his feet. He shakes out the aches in his knees and reaches for his bag. “I’ll be sure to leave a glowing review.”

“You do that, sir,” she says, turning back to her station.

“It was nice meeting you all,” Wu says, turning back to the family. He’s surprised at his own sincerity. “Katie, that should work perfectly now, with an added bonus of being pretty close to untraceable, should you ever have need for that.”

“Thanks so much Mr. Wu.” She grins, holding the comm close to her chest. 

He ruffles her hair. “Siris. My friends call me Siris.”

“Well then, thank you Mr. Siris!”

He laughs and extends a hand to Callie. “Pleasure.”

“All mine! Safe travels. Maybe you’ll come back to our world some day.”

“Maybe.” He shakes Charles hand.

“What was the job, anyway?” Charles asks.

Wu hesitates. “Government. It was a security contract.” 

“Can I ask why it didn’t work out?”

Wu shrugs. “It was a time thing. I was lead to believe it would be a one year contract, but it turns out it was a minimum of five. My daughter just left for boarding school, so if I was going to take an off planet contract, now would be the time. Good money, but not enough to be gone so long from her and my wife.” He thinks it over. "It's a war thing too, if I'm being honest. I think it's time for me to retire and become a mall cop."

Charles laughs. “Sounds like you made the right choice.”

“Yeah.” He considers. “The best choice for me and mine at least. All I've got left.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment to take a peek at the beautiful work by [Cliffe](http://cliffearts.tumblr.com)! We worked together for the Big Bang, and their work is phenomenal! Below are links to their depictions of:
> 
> [Emily Grey](http://cliffearts.tumblr.com/post/157607057796/now-why-did-a-silly-little-thing-like-you-wake-me)  
> and  
> [Katie Jensen](http://cliffearts.tumblr.com/post/158244768649/second-image-i-created-for-the-rvbficwars-big)


End file.
